Do you know why are headphones printed L and R

One day I was watching an HD movie on my laptop. I was not using headphone. I fee that I am not enjoying as much as I enjoy to watch on a phone with my Asus’s head-phone. It gives me different feel compare to watching a movie with my headphones. I realized that when I plug headphone, some sound are coming from left and some are coming from the right. Sometimes it’s come from both side but different speed and volume. That day i decided to find out the reason. after reading many articles i come to this conclusion. Please read below to know why headphones are printed L and R

It’s time to know why headphones or earphones are printed L and R

Why (R) and (L) is written on headphones! If this means Right and Left, then are wrong. You would have heard many songs and watched movies on your mobiles using headphones to listen the audio. You will be aware that there (L) and (R) has written on the headphone but have you tried to know what is the reason behind it. You must be thinking that (L) and (R) for plugging to Left and Right. you put your headphones in your left ear if (L) is written and right ear if (R) is written. Have you ever noticed that what happens when you put L headphone in your right ear and R headphone in your left ear? It gives you the same music or dialog. Then why are L and R written?

Headphone pass the sound from different channel

In fact, these are not unnecessarily written. There are many rational reasons behind it. One of the main reasons is ‘recording’. In stereo recordings, if the sound coming from the left you hear it in the Left channel of the headphone and will be louder and it will be lower in the right channel.

Having Left and Right channel in the Earphones is having another reason and that is it’s easy to make the listener hear the sounds by single channel one after the other rather in both the channels. Also, it makes easy to distinguish or identify between two different sounds. Several songs have Loud Musical Instruments (e.g.-dhol) and Soft Musical instrument (e.g.-flute) in one music. So in order to avoid the Loud music suppressing the soft music, they both are played on different channels.

In addition to recording the exact sound of the Left and Right channel must be taken care of. Have you ever seen a movie through your laptop or phone using headphone to listen the audio? If Yes! Then maybe you would have notice that the sound of the car in your headphone coming from your left will be more in the left channel and less in the right channel. This is to make the listener the sense of actually being present at that scene.

While I was writing this article. Inputs has been taken from various site such as wikipedia, answers.yahoo.comquora and other resources. if you found any issue/ wrong information in this article, Please let me know. we will resolve soon.

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